"Car Surfing": Another High-Risk, Extremely Dangerous Teen Activity

Car surfing is an illegal extreme sport gaining popularity in the United States of America, in which passengers of moving vehicles perform various stunts, including hanging out of the car or 'surfing' on the hood of it. Car surfing often involves alcohol or drugs,and several people have already been killed doing such stunts.

Car surfing has not just affected teenagers. In December 2004, Phoenix lost its CFO (age 55) when he died after he reportedly set his cruise control at 55 mph and then climbed onto the roof of the car.

This behavior, along with the many other high risk behaviors today's teens are tempted to engage in (see prior posts on teen use of oxycontin, "the "choking game"" and teen girls' high risk behavior) formed the basis of my proposal, adopted by our Board of Trustees, to broaden the Texas Association of School Board's position to include education for the dangers associated with risk taking bahaviors.

Feb. 8, 2006, 12:46AMTeen's death highlights dangers of 'car surfing'17-year-old Klein High junior was riding on the hood of car driven by longtime friend

By MÓNICA GUZMÁNCopyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

Willie Williamson's mother had agreed to let her son come home a little later than usual. It was Super Bowl Sunday, after all, and his buddy had a 10:30 curfew.

But at 10:36 p.m., she got a call from a neighbor — the call every parent dreads — and rushed out the door.

"I talked to Willie about drugs," Gloria Williamson says now. "I talked to Willie about drinking. I talked to Willie about if you go out with a girl, you have to respect her ... but this is something I thought I would never have to talk to him about."

On Sunday night, Williamson lost her 17-year-old son to "car surfing," a teenage prank that is exactly what it sounds like — riding on the hoods or roofs of moving cars.

It's a term familiar to many teens who have seen the stunt played out by professional daredevils on TV and everyday thrill seekers on countless youth humor Web sites.

Williamson is one of several people to die while car surfing in recent years. A review of newspaper articles turns up fatal incidents from Florida to California and even Australia, with concerned observers citing the influence of TV and film, as well as teenage abandon. The phenomenon was the topic of a 1999 article in Annals of Emergency Medicine.

The dangerous stunt was familiar to Walter "Willie" Williamson IV and his lifelong friend, who had car surfed many times before the tragedy Sunday, in the 17100 block of King's Walk in northwest Harris County, when Williamson took a fatal fall from the hood of his friend's car.

Gloria and Walter Williamson, both longtime Houston Chronicle employees, arrived minutes later and waited in an ambulance while paramedics huddled over their dying son.

It wasn't long before they were told the youngest of their three children had died.

Night of tragedy

Earlier that night, Williamson had left a Super Bowl party with the friend who would watch him die. Three months apart in age, they lived on the same street and had some of the same teachers as juniors at Klein High School.

That night, Williamson lay on the hood of the friend's car while the other drove, their friends later told the Williamsons.

During one of Williamson's surfs, he told his friend to stop the car, said accident investigators with the Harris County Sheriff's Department. As the car slowed, Williamson jumped, investigators said. Gloria Williamson said she was told her son fell. His head hit concrete.

Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.

At Klein High School, Williamson's name will join those of other deceased students and faculty carved into stone at a memorial garden, Principal Patrick Huff said.

Huff said he had never heard of his students car surfing, but was disturbed to learn of another dangerous activity whose risks are at the very root of its appeal.

"Whether it be reckless behavior in an automobile or reckless behavior in what you drink or what you take ... there's so many things for kids to be involved in now," he said.

Monday was an awful day for students and faculty, Huff said, and counselors were available to talk with students who needed it. Many of them heard of the death for the first time when Huff announced it to the school that morning.

"It's so unfortunate," Huff said. "It could have been so easily avoided. Hindsight is always 20/20."

On Monday, the teen driver came to the Williamson home, accompanied by his parents. Gloria Williamson said she was touched by the gesture. She added that he was clearly devastated by the loss.

"Sometimes we think we know our kids so well," she said, "and we have to trust them and let them enjoy life."

A reporter attempted to reach the teen at this home several times on Tuesday but was unsuccessful.

Parental guidance

As he was growing up, Willie would do the sort of things that bring out Band-Aids, bruises and worried mothers.

It sometimes meant trips to the hospital to wrap up bad scrapes acquired during failed bicycle stunts. When he was 7, Willie broke his wrists leaping from the bumper of a truck. He was trying to slam dunk a basketball, as his mother recalls.

Each time she told him, as any mother would, to be more careful, to never do it again.

She never had the chance Sunday.

When Willie's friends offered their condolences Monday, they told Gloria Williamson what they knew about car surfing — and that Willie and his friend had been doing it for a while.

"I made them promise me they would never, ever do something like that and if they saw someone else do it, they would tell them to stop," Williamson said. "It's one moment of excitement compared to a whole life."